I was referring to their bonus point "sales."

Why in the world would you think I was replying to the first post in the thread when it was so obvious I was referring to the one immediately before mine?




The Jedi Master

Sorry it was not obvious to me

I usually quote the post Iam replying to, it makes it easier to see what a person is replying to, but we all think differently

I do that if I'm replying to a post farther up the thread, because yes that would be hard to track if my post 12 is a reply to 6 without a quote.

If I'm replying to the one immediately above, though, I don't bother as I feel it redundant.



The Jedi Master

What did you mean then, Jedi?

That while it's a nice idea, to give loyal customers a discount based on their purchase history, the rules are overly convoluted.
To the extent that it takes annoying levels of effort to figure out whether it would be cheaper to buy a module on a 30% off sale or use a 60% bonus point sale on a full price module when you only have X dollars...

I don't find accounting entertaining.



The Jedi Master

Well, what pissed me off greatly about it was that there was a "time limit" to when I could use my points. I bought DCS A10C at Beta stage and DCS BS2 as soon as it came out; I think I had some points from FC3 as well. But when I was looking at spending the point more than a year later, I was surprised that they were gone. Apparently, the points are only really valid for a year after your purchase, after which they are gone. Forfeit.

Yeah, thanks ED. Even more reasons NOT to buy stuff until well into their development or release.

There was mainly the fact that you only got points from non-sale items and they could only be used on non-sale items that limited their utility.

In other words, they rewarded people who paid full price all the time but pretty much were useless to people who waited solely for sales.



The Jedi Master

The good (relatively) thing is, You still get bonus points when buying something with a pre-purchase discount. So did I, saving 20% on the upcoming Spit, and thus pumping up bonus piggybank, which I'm going to use on Normandy (if they don't come up with some new silly limitation, of course).

So you get them, but can you use bonus points on a preorder?



The Jedi Master

Well hopefully, they come out with a new product you want within a year from your last purchase. Might want to check if this "time limit" is still on their rules.

If I recall correctly, you usually can't use the bonus points on early access or any new modules that have just been released....you're forced to go full price without being able to do anything with accumulated 'bonus points'. The whole thing is the best part of a scam.

On the same thought of commandline parameters ....... check this
https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=178249

guy suggests to try and have chat or community type stuff ... a bold a noble idea
.... but can anyone else remember hyperlobby4 i used to use it a lot with IL2 / lOMAC
to set-up games etc , it worked great

Wouldn't it be great if we could use it for DCS ...........

If we had command line parameters we could

Early access are usually sold at a discount and that is why your bonus points can't be used. You can wait for the pre-purchase period to expire, when the purchase price returns to the full price you can then use your bonus points.

Covering old ground here but bonus points are collected by buying content from the ED store...so why then do they put caveats on when they can be used? Ultimately you can save $10-$15 in the pre-purchase period, or you wait until that expires and then you're limited to use $10-$15 worth of bonus points instead. Unless ED define 'bonus' differently to anyone else on Planet Earth, that isn't actually much of a bonus at all.

It's the best part of a waste of time. Perhaps it only looks good when ED claim something is a 'sale item' or 'discounted' but what they really mean is that you can use your 'bonus' points or 10% more bonus points than normal on cherry-picked content with products of their choosing.

Still not sure about the inability of using bonus credits on "new" items. There is a point in the bonus program rules, which is worded in a way that suggests so, but I know people were spending their bonus points left and right just after L-39, Gazelle and F-5 release, when they were still hot off the presses. Given that fact, one has to calculate indeed if it's worth going for pre-order, or waiting a month for a release and using up bonus (quite often a better deal).

The one year expiry date is there for sure, though, as pointed out during transaction, and/or verified later on personal ED shop account. Not a big deal for me, as it looks like the Normandy, the only thing I'm looking forward to in near future, is most likely going to be out before November '17 (my bonus expiry date). If I was one of You, modern jet-heads, however, waiting for F-18 or F-14, I would expect my bonus to go down the drain indeed, 'cause even Flying Spaghetti Monster cannot predict when these will be released .

All and all, I'd say the bonus points make actually sense when planning to buy at least two products in quick succession, and when star and planet alignment is just right... But I wouldn't call them a well-thought feature.

IIRC, they brought out the bonus points system AFTER I purchased my DCS products. So meh, they can shove these in the you-know-where. As Paradaz has said, it's not really much of a bonus, just some form of "gimmick" designed to fool the consumer and pressure him to buy again before his points "expires."

Really, if you wanted to reward a customer in some form of "loyalty points," why put a time limit? Especially considering ED's development and release timelines....

EXACTLY